Blog Review: Oct. 30


Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out the future of the automotive industry, the options for making the transition to autonomous driving, and how experience with electric vehicles influences perception of them. In a video, Mentor's Colin Walls digs into the challenges of testing memory in an embedded system. A Synopsys writer looks at doubling bandwidth in PCIe 5.0, the PHY logical changes a... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools It’s been a tough period for memory. But is there now a sign of a rebound? For the September 2019 quarter, Lam Research reported revenue of $2.166 billion, and net income was $466 million, or $3.09 per diluted share on a U.S. GAAP basis. The outlook at Lam (LRCX) is a bright spot. “LRCX posted strong results and guidance, noting strength from logic and foundry in the December ... » read more

Power Semi Wars Begin


Several vendors are rolling out the next wave of power semiconductors based on gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC), setting the stage for a showdown against traditional silicon-based devices in the market. Power semiconductors are specialized transistors that incorporate different and competitive technologies like GaN, SiC and silicon. Power semis operate as a switch in high-volt... » read more

Making Random Variation Less Random


The economics for random variation are changing, particularly at advanced nodes and in complex packaging schemes. Random variation always will exist in semiconductor manufacturing processes, but much of what is called random has a traceable root cause. The reason it is classified as random is that it is expensive to track down all of the various quirks in a complex manufacturing process or i... » read more

Scaling Up And Down


You don’t have to look very far in the semiconductor world before you see the word “scaling.” Perhaps you read an industry news article headline about transistor scaling – how those nearly nanoscale components are shrinking even smaller in size down to the atomic scale. Or maybe you heard a reference to memory capacity scaling – how our favorite mobile devices can store more high-reso... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers The semiconductor capital spending race continues to escalate in the leading-edge logic space. Intel and Samsung have separately announced big capital spending plans in 2019. Intel’s latest CapEx budget is $15.5 billion in 2019, while Samsung’s CapEx is slated for $16.204 billion for the year, according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. Now, TSMC is raising the stakes. TSMC this... » read more

What’s The Best Advanced Packaging Option?


As traditional chip designs become more unwieldy and expensive at each node, many IC vendors are exploring or pursuing alternative approaches using advanced packaging. The problem is there are too many advanced packaging options on the table already, and the list continues to grow. Moreover, each option has several tradeoffs and challenges, and all of them are still relatively expensive. ... » read more

Advances In 3D CMOS Image Sensors Optical Modeling: Combining Realistic Morphologies With FDTD


This paper describes an innovative methodology to investigate the relationship between device morphology and the optical performance of CMOS image sensors. By coupling a FDTD-based 3D Maxwell solver with silicon-accurate process modeling software, we have been able to analyze the sensitivity of image sensor quantum efficiency with respect to statistical variations in nm-scale device topology. A... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Packaging and test In a major deal that has some implications in the OSAT supply chain, South Korea’s Nepes has taken over Deca Technologies’ wafer-level packaging manufacturing line in the Philippines. In addition, Nepes has also licensed Deca’s M-Series wafer-level packaging technology. This includes fan-in technology as well as wafer- and panel-level fan-out. It also includes an ad... » read more

Influence Of SiGe On Parasitic Parameters in PMOS


In this paper, simulation-based design-technology co-optimization (DTCO) is carried out using the Coventor SEMulator3D virtual fabrication platform with its integrated electrical analysis capabilities [1]. In our study, process modeling is used to predict the sensitivity of FinFET device performance to changes in a silicon germanium epitaxial process. The simulated process is a gate-last flow p... » read more

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